Elisabeth Swan

Hello!

I’m Elisabeth and I’m a Managing Partner & an Executive Advisor here at GoLeanSixSigma.com. I’ve been using process improvement to help clients achieve their missions and visions for over 25 years. I’ve worked with organizations from the top of the Fortune 100 to a local Child Care nonprofit. I help clients build problem-solving cultures by aligning their efforts with their objectives and then providing coaching, training, strategic planning and change management expertise.

Why I Love What I Do

I’m a translator. I love taking complicated topics and deciphering them so they make sense to myself and everyone around me. I love collaborating with my clients and colleagues to build a problem-solving culture together. I get a huge sense of satisfaction working with people to overcome seemingly intractable organizational barriers. After over 25 years I get a kick out of sharing what I’ve learned so the people I work with don’t have to struggle quite so much for so long or at least not as much as I did! I love the moment when a student no longer needs me.

Favorite Quote

Charitable Contributions

I volunteer on the board of a nonprofit radio station, at the town service center to help the homeless and I help the local library by searching out and donating books. I’m not sure it qualifies as a charitable contribution but one of my favorite efforts is running a yearly work-day party where friends and family join together to clear brush, plug holes, patch the roof and fix what needs fixing for my aging parents.

Fun Facts

I started performing ensemble comedy at ImprovBoston at the same time I started my Quality career. I’m not on the comedy stage any more but technically I can ride a unicycle…just not recently.

Professional Summary

She got her start in the 1980s at a consulting firm that pioneered Lean Techniques and helped with the reconstruction of Japan after World War II. During the mid 1990s, when Jack Welch brought Six Sigma into all GE businesses, she worked as a Green Belt and Black Belt instructor for dozens of GE lines of business.

Elisabeth has trained 1000s of people, coached 100s more and continues to help organizations complete hundreds of Lean Six Sigma projects. Improvement results range from cutting out minutes of wasted cycle time to millions of dollars in savings.

Elisabeth has worked in a broad spectrum of industries and focused on a huge array of processes. Project work has included reducing workplace injuries in the hotel industry, reducing the time to open accounts in the financial industry, reducing the number of maintenance visits in telecommunications, reducing hospital readmissions and many more.

Working in the Quality world means she’s been engaged to develop improvement rollouts, design simulations, facilitate Process Walks, map processes and run Rapid Improvement Events (Kaizens) while working with leadership to make sure it’s all supported and reinforced.